Cool Change
Cool Change is the second episode of season 1 of . Summary After the Holly Gribbs shooting, Jim Brass is demoted to homicide and Grissom is made graveyard shift. Catherine vows to solve Gribbs' murder and is irritated when Grissom brings in Sara Sidle from San Francisco to investigate Warrick's whereabouts the night Holly died. Grissom and Nick investigate the death of a 40 million dollar slot machine winner, who apparently committed suicide by jumping from a building. Plot Teaser At the casino inside the Hotel Monaco, guest Ted Sallenger is egged on by his girlfriend Jamie to play the slots for a chance to win $40 million in a contest held by the casino. Though less than convinced of their chances, Ted wins the jackpot, much to Jamie's delight. The casino's security chief, Elias Templeton, upgrade Ted and Jamie to the hotel's presidential suite and escorts them there personally. Jamie initially is still euphorically happy, but is flabbergasted when Ted tells her to leave, pressing the point that he, a millionaire now, shouldn't be wasting his time with her. Before Jamie can respond, someone at the door knocks, identifying themselves as room service. The next morning, Gil Grissom arrives at the Monaco on a crime-scene call, all the while on the phone to someone asking to be kept apprised of Holly Gribbs' condition. The victim is the jackpot winner, Ted Sallenger, dead from a 150-foot drop from the hotel's upper floors, according to the lead investigator on the case, Detective Barns. Though Barns is mindful of the presumed “curse” of the Monaco sweepstakes since the last four winners turned up dead or missing, Grissom is quick to deem them a coincidence as he'd worked those cases. As Barns advises Grissom that Sallenger's girlfriend is upstairs in custody, Grissom deduces that Sallenger's death was not a suicide, since he was wearing his prescription eyeglasses. Jumpers, Grissom explains, take their glasses off because they don't want to watch themselves die. Act 1 Grissom returns to the lab and to a larger-than-normal stack of messages from the lab's receptionist. He then proceeds to Jim Brass' office, which Brass is in the process of cleaning out. Brass has been removed from command of the lab and transferred to the homicide division, with Grissom assigned to replace him. Brass leaves him with the parting words, “Cover your ass, and hide. They're all yours, pal.” Catherine Willows, Nick Stokes, and a distraught Warrick Brown watch a news report in the break room on Holly's shooting. As Catherine and Nick confront Warrick on why he would have left Holly alone, Grissom arrives to brief the team on Holly's shooting and well as to announce his reassignment as lab supervisor. Grissom then briefs them on the Monaco jumper case, which he takes himself, and he assigns Holly's shooting to Nick. Catherine protests and asks for Holly's case, since she had convinced Holly not to quit. Grissom relents, then informs the team that Sara Sidle, a CSI from San Francisco, would be arriving to handle the internal investigation into Warrick's actions. After Grissom reassigns Nick to backing him up on the Sallenger case, Warrick asks Grissom to reinstate him, but Grissom instead advises him to use his administrative leave time to get his story straight before Sara arrives. Catherine arrives at the Martin Luther King apartment complex where Holly was shot. Her initial findings determine that Holly had fired back at her attacker. Catherine also finds a pager beeping under a couch. At the morgue, medical examiner Dr. Jenna Williams confirms to Grissom and Nick that Ted Sallenger did not take his own life. Tiny shards of black glass were found in defensive wounds on Sallenger's wrist. At the Monaco's presidential suite, Grissom and Nick find a shattered champagne bottle, the apparent source of the glass shards, leading to a cursory hypothesis that Jamie attacked Sallenger with the bottle after room service had delivered it. They also find a blood trail and blood-soaked towels. In the lab's interrogation room, Jamie confirms she attacked Sallenger with the bottle, but that Ted left the room to get medical attention for his wounds. Nick confirms from the hotel security logs that the only time the suite's card key was used was when Elias Templeton opened it for the two of them. And since Jamie was not married to Ted, she had no financial motive for killing him since she wouldn't inherit the contest winnings. Grissom surmises that Sallenger didn't fall from his hotel balcony, but the hotel's roof. In the lab's break room, Warrick finishes checking in on Holly's condition, but then receives a call from Judge Cohen. Cohen is livid that Warrick bet on the wrong team on his behalf and demands they meet at “the spot.” Act 2 Grissom and Nick arrive at the roof of the Monaco to implement an experiment Grissom dubs “Operation Norman.” To the delight and applause of a watching crowd, Grissom drops three crash dummies on the ground in front of the hotel. Grissom then returns to the hotel's sidewalk to applause from the crowd as he takes photographs of the three dummies, each one dropped by different means to determine how each would land if pushed, if jumped, or if fallen. As Grissom compares his findings and determines that Ted Sallenger was pushed off the roof, he is joined by Sara Sidle, who teases Grissom for employing old-school methodology in favor of computer simulation. The subject then changes to that of Holly Gribbs, whom Grissom says is still in surgery and isn't doing well. Warrick meets Judge Cohen to pay him back on the botched wager, but only has $4,000 out of the $10,000 he owes him. Cohen listens to none of Warrick's excuses and gives him an hour to pay him back. Sara arrives at the lab and meets Catherine, who at first is reluctant to work with her. Sara convinces her to help her find Holly Gribbs' shooter, and Catherine brings her in the loop as she tries to trace the usage on the pager. Sara then asks Catherine where Warrick can be found. Meanwhile, Nick and Grissom are reviewing the security camera footage of Ted Sallenger's winning slot pull. The CSIs find that, just before Sallenger sat at the machine, another man had been sitting at the same machine for over eleven hours. Grissom has Nick call the slot host to get the other man's name off his slot redemption card. Catherine consults with ballistics specialist Bobby Dawson on an elimination match on Holly's service weapon. The two are shocked to learn that Holly was in fact shot with her own gun. At the Monaco casino, Nick and Grissom find the other man who'd used the contest-winning slot machine, a man named Red Carlton. Grissom sits down to play alongside him, noticing the unique dust on his pants that could only have come from the hotel's roof. As Carlton is taken away by uniforms, Grissom hits a jackpot. Grissom hands Nick a tub and tells him to collect his winnings as a “CSI-3 initiation.” Warrick is found by Sara at another casino playing blackjack, and interrupts his game to talk to him. Sara takes Warrick to a cafe nearby and questions him on his reasoning for leaving Holly alone, already fully aware that Warrick's gambling took him away from the crime scene. When Warrick attempts to justify his actions, Sara stops him cold by the news that Holly Gribbs died on the operating table. Act 3 In the lab break room, Sara and Catherine are in the midst of getting drinks when the pager Catherine found begins beeping. Catherine dials the number on her cellphone and reaches Jerrod Cooper, the pager's owner and Holly's presumed killer. Without revealing her identity, Catherine sets up a meeting with Jerrod at a motel. Nick and Grissom have Red Carlton in the interrogation room, questioning him about his contact with Ted Sallenger. Carlton explains that he'd met Sallenger and confronted him about winning the jackpot on “his” machine. Sallenger offered to buy him drinks as consolation, but Carlton switched to coffee while Sallenger continued drinking. Carlton admits to being on the roof, but says he went there to take his own life rather than Sallenger's, but couldn't go through with it. Grissom asks Carlton to wait in the room while they examine Sallenger's shoes for roof dust, which would confirm whether Carlton pushed Sallenger off the roof. At the motel where Jerrod Cooper agreed to meet Catherine, LVPD officers led by Brass are clearing rooms just as Sara and Catherine arrive. Jerrod is found and handcuffed, but Catherine notices a scratch above his eye. As Sara suggests getting a DNA sample, Catherine broadcasts a general message over her radio that Holly Gribbs' murderer has been caught. As Warrick hears Catherine's broadcast at the parking garage, he is met by Judge Cohen, whom he gives the last of the money he owes him. Judge Cohen, however, is not content with calling things even between the two of them. Cohen informs Warrick that the two are now “in bed” together as a result of their gambling activities, and that Warrick is now beholden to him whether he likes it or not. Grissom is waiting outside the autopsy lab as Catherine arrives to get a DNA sample from Holly's corpse, offering his aid if she needs it. Catherine declines with thanks, then proceeds into autopsy to collect the tissue scrapings from Holly's fingernails, after which Catherine tells Holly she's sorry. Grissom and Nick examine Ted Sallenger's shoes and find no trace of roof dust on them, confirming Red Carlton's story and eliminating him as a suspect. They then find fibers in the wristband of the expensive wristwatch Sallenger bought himself. Nick leaves to return to the Monaco's presidential suite to compare the fibers against the room's carpeting, and Grissom tells him to pick Jamie back up on the way back. The possibility that Sallenger was dragged along the carpet, Grissom explains, has now reestablished Jamie as a suspect. Grissom meets with Dr. Williams, who found a diamond-shaped impression on the back of Ted Sallenger's scalp. Whatever the weapon was, Dr. Williams explains, killed Ted Sallenger with a single blow. In the DNA lab, Greg Sanders reports to Catherine and Sara that the scrapings from Holly's nails match Jerrod Cooper's DNA conclusively. As Nick compares the fibers to a swatch of the Monaco suite's carpet, Grissom searches the presidential suite and finds a candleholder with a playing card suit design on the side. A luminol test on the carpet near the balcony finds more blood stains, which Grissom calls in to Nick. Grissom then meets with Elias Templeton to perform an experiment on the presidential suite's door lock. Grissom uses the cardkey to open the door, but Templeton's security team reports that the door opening did not register on the room's security log. Grissom and Nick confront Jamie with their findings in the lab's interrogation room: Sallenger returned to the suite after having drinks with Carlton, only to be killed by Jamie with the candleholder and dumped off the balcony. She then cleaned the carpet, but left the bloody towels in plain view, claiming Sallenger's wounds from the initial attack with the wine bottle as her alibi. Jamie doesn't protest and allows herself to be arrested, showing no remorse for her actions. Grissom finds Warrick seated in a hallway in the lab and sits next to him. He tells Warrick that he has been ordered to fire him on the grounds that he violated procedure by leaving Holly alone. Warrick hands Grissom his sidearm and ID, confessing that he had left her alone to place the bet. Grissom then tells Warrick he doesn't want to lose someone else after already losing Holly, then hands him back his gun and ID. A handcuffed Jerrod Cooper is led to a squadcar by Brass as Grissom and his entire team look on in the parking lot. As Cooper is transported away, each member of the team leaves for home, except for a heavy-hearted Warrick, who remains in the parking lot, contemplative. Recap Recurring Roles *Gerald McCullouch as Bobby Dawson *Judith Scott as Dr. Jenna Williams *Jeff Snyder as Officer Smith *Eric Szmanda as Greg Sanders *Chandra West as Holly Gribbs *Garland Whitt as Jerrod Cooper *Harrison Young as Judge Cohen Guest Stars *Ellen Crawford as Lt. Jane Gribbs (scenes deleted) *Tim De Zarn as Red Carlton *Paula Francis as News Anchor (herself) *Zach Johnson as Detective Barns *Monty Jordan as SWAT Team Commander (uncredited) *Rocky McMurray as Surveillance Director (uncredited) *Johnny Messner as Ted Sallenger *Timilee Romolini as Jamie *Darnell Suttles as Elias Templeton (credited as M. Darnell Suttles) Episode Title Notes *This episode marks Jorja Fox 's first appearance as Sara Sidle as well as her addition to the show's principal cast. *It also marks the first appearances of recurring characters Bobby Dawson and Dr. Jenna Williams, and the final appearances of Jerrod Cooper and (via flashback footage) Holly Gribbs. *Scenes featuring Ellen Crawford as Holly Gribbs' mother, Lt. Jane Gribbs, were cut from the final broadcast. *Jamie's last name, Smith, was listed in the episode script but never uttered in dialogue. Continuity Quotes :Nick: How do you know all this crap? :Grissom: It's our job to know stuff. ---- :Grissom: Yes, yes, Norman pushed. Norman jumped. Norman fell. :Sara: Wouldn't you, if you were married to Mrs. Roper? :Grissom:I don't even have to turn around. Sara Sidle. :Sara: That's me. Still tossin' simulation dummies? There are other ways to tell, you know. :Grissom: No thanks. I'm a scientist. I like to see it. Newton dropped the apple. I drop dummies. :Sara: You're old school. :Grissom: Exactly. And this guy was pushed. :Sara: How's the girl? :Grissom: She's still in surgery. She's not doing very well. :Sara: That's too bad. :Grissom: God, Sara, I have so many unanswered whys. :Sara: There's only one why that matters now, why did Warrick Brown leave the scene? ---- :Sara: Do you know where I can find Catherine Willows? :Catherine: She's out in the field. Let me guess, Sara Sidle? :Sara: I know who I am, I think you're a little confused. :Catherine: If you think you're taking my case, Forget it. :Sara: Ok, we can stay here and argue or we can get out there and find who did this to Holly Gribbs. Two sharp woman are better than one.. ---- :Grissom: Laughing Jacks or better. You're under arrest. :Suspect: Oh, yeah? What for? :Grissom: First-degree murder. :Suspect: Oh. On what grounds? :Grissom: at suspect's boots Roof dust. ---- :Catherine dials the number on the pager: :Sara: What are you gonna say? Hi, I'm a criminalist, I was in the neighborhood... :Catherine: Shhhhh....it's ringing. :Suspect: Hello. :Catherine: Ah, hey. :Suspect: Hey, who's this? I just dialed my own damn beeper. :Catherine: Uh-uh, it's my beeper now, I found it. :Suspect: That ain't your beeper, girl, it's mine, I do a lot of business on that beeper. :Catherine: What kind of business? :Suspect: You know, slinging a little something-something. :Catherine: Oh, a little something-something, or maybe a little bling-bling? :Suspect: Ah, so what you know about some bling-bling? :Catherine: Well invite me over to your crib, baby, and you might find out. :Suspect: Three Aces Motel, room 202 :Catherine: Three Aces Motel, room 202, ahh, see you soon. *hangs up the phone* :Sara: ... :Catherine: Did I just do that? :Sara: What's a bling-bling? :Catherine: Got me.a See Also External Links Category:CSI: Las Vegas Episodes